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As some of you may know, I bought myself a crapload of CDs for my
birthday, containing a selection of the very best music from the 1950s
and later. And let me tell you, some of this music is very, *very* good.
But hey, what do you expect from a deliberately unrepresentative sample? ;-)
I've noticed several things while listening to this stuff. Probably the
most striking thing is the track times. For example, take an iconic
track such as Darin's "Dream Lover". It's so well-known that "almost
everybody" who was alive at the appropriate time has surely heard it and
would instantly recognise it. But did you know... from the opening chord
to the final fade out, the entire masterwork is less than 120 *seconds*
long? (A quick Google search states that it's 1 minute and 57 seconds in
length, and that's probably including a brief silence at both ends.)
Last night I transcoded 4 hours of this stuff, and I could barely find a
track that was longer than 3 minutes. Almost all of them are two minutes
and something, and a few aren't even two minutes long. A vanishingly
small number exceed 3 minutes, and not one single one reaches to 4
minutes. And yet, these are (almost) all iconic era-defining
masterpieces of popular music, instantly recognisible to anyone who has
heard them.
Now, consider another iconic track: Cafe del Mar. It's a trance anthem
that anybody even vaguely familiar with that scene would recognise
instantly. There are several hundred billion remixes of this track (as
is usual in the trace world), but the three most famous mixes are from
Three 'N' One, Nalin & Kane and Macro V (in chronological order). The
track times are, 8:43, 9:44 and 8:34 respectively.
But let us remind ourselves: This is a song with no words. It consists
almost entirely of an arpeggio of 5 chords. (Specifically, F minor, C#
major, D# major, A# minor and A# minor in a different inversion.) That's
*it*. That's the whole thing. (Well, OK, there's a somewhat
characteristic bassline too.)
Taking the Three 'N' One version, most if not all of the track is
buildup. You get a thunderous drumbeat and a throbbing bassline, and
teasing hints at what the melody is going to be. Only about 3 minutes or
so before the end of the track does the euphoric melody finally erupt
spectacularly to life. And then there's a minute or so of calm-down
afterwards. So the core of the song is actually fairly small, and yet
the whole thing is nearly ten minutes long.
Now, this is after all trance music, which is kind of a special case.
But I have many, many CDs in my collection where a typical song is
easily 5 to 10 minutes in duration. And many of them aren't nearly as
memorable as Dream Lover.
It seems that somehow, these musicians have shoehorned an entire
soundscape into just a few hundred seconds of recording, and made it so
memorable that 50 years later people are still willing to pay good money
to listen to it. That's quite an achievement! We could probably learn a
lot from these guys...
Then again, perhaps it's just that of the thousands of millions of hours
of music that was recorded, time has filtered out all the inevitable
junk and kept only the transcendental genius. Who knows?
To quote a song, "Time can make the Sun grow cold. Time can wash the
clouds of gold. Time, who knows the miracle that Time can do?"
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Invisible wrote:
<snippity>
> Last night I transcoded 4 hours of this stuff, and I could barely find
> a track that was longer than 3 minutes. Almost all of them are two
> minutes and something, and a few aren't even two minutes long. A
> vanishingly small number exceed 3 minutes, and not one single one
> reaches to 4 minutes.
This is probably explained by the technology of the time. 3-4 minutes
was the track length that could fit on the 78's and (later) 45's. If you
wanted reasonable playback volume you had to shorten the track. IIRC
'House of the Rising Sun' by The Animals was the first 45 to exceed a
playback time of 5 minutes.
The length of Trance tracks is probably a function of the length of time
you can listen without getting bored in your own home. In a club setting
the live mix is considerably longer, this time a function of how long
the clubbers can remain on their feet and the dj can improvise in a haze
of coke and E's :-)
John
--
Cogito sum,|| wbu### [at] tznvy pbz (rot'ed) || GPG Key Fingerprint:
ergo sum, || These opinions are mine alone, || 0D9BCF4CF1B71CA2F5F7
cogito || others can find their own || BFBBCBC34EDEAEFCE453
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As a rule you are quite right.
Nonetheless, there always were longer tracks: look at Magna Charta's "Lord
of the Ages", for instance.
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TC wrote:
> As a rule you are quite right.
>
> Nonetheless, there always were longer tracks: look at Magna Charta's "Lord
> of the Ages", for instance.
As a rule, even today a typical "radio edit" is about 3 to 5 minutes
long. But that's still longer than 2 minutes (or 1 minute 45 seconds,
for that matter).
The surprising thing is not that the old tracks are shorter, but rather
that it doesn't seem to *matter*. They somehow don't "sound" short.
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Doctor John wrote:
> This is probably explained by the technology of the time.
That's a better explanation than what I was thinking.
I was wondering if the CDs nowadays get the "album" version of the song, and
what you're getting from the '50s is the "radio" version of the song. You
can usually find two different versions of modern popular music, one cut
down to fit between commercials, one designed to play out the entire song as
conceived. Usually if there's a long break in the middle, followed by a
refrain, that's the bit that gets cut.
I was amused when I realized several of the Queen songs have cross-song
references, ensuring they would always be played together even on the radio.
Last time I really listened closely, I wasn't nearly cynical enough to
believe this was done on purpose for financial reasons.
And, for what it's worth, I have several albums where one track fills the
entire side of an LP, and others where the tracks are are intentionally
somewhat longer than you could fit on an entire LP, even if there was a
reasonable place to split them in the middle. I wouldn't call them trance as
such.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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Darren New wrote:
> And, for what it's worth, I have several albums where one track fills
> the entire side of an LP.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ricochet-Tangerine-Dream/dp/B0000074CB/ref=ntt_mus_ep_wlb_dpt
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tangram-Tangerine-Dream/dp/B0000074CE/ref=pd_sim_m_h__7
The audio previews are truly useless here. :-D
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Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> And, for what it's worth, I have several albums where one track fills
>> the entire side of an LP.
>
>
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ricochet-Tangerine-Dream/dp/B0000074CB/ref=ntt_mus_ep_wlb_dpt
>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tangram-Tangerine-Dream/dp/B0000074CE/ref=pd_sim_m_h__7
>
>
> The audio previews are truly useless here. :-D
I was thinking more like
http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Hell/dp/B00138D2AS/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk_alt
(which is some of the theme music from Cosmos, for example)
Or "Waiting for Cousteau."
Track listing: 1. Calypso (8:24); 2. Calypso Part 2 (7:10); 3. Calypso Part
3 (Fin de siecle) (6:28); and 4. Waiting for Cousteau (46:55).
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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On 13-4-2010 10:36, Invisible wrote:
> As some of you may know, I bought myself a crapload of CDs for my
> birthday, containing a selection of the very best music from the 1950s
> and later. And let me tell you, some of this music is very, *very* good.
> But hey, what do you expect from a deliberately unrepresentative sample?
> ;-)
>
> I've noticed several things while listening to this stuff. Probably the
> most striking thing is the track times. For example, take an iconic
> track such as Darin's "Dream Lover". It's so well-known that "almost
> everybody" who was alive at the appropriate time has surely heard it and
> would instantly recognise it. But did you know... from the opening chord
> to the final fade out, the entire masterwork is less than 120 *seconds*
> long? (A quick Google search states that it's 1 minute and 57 seconds in
> length, and that's probably including a brief silence at both ends.)
>
> Last night I transcoded 4 hours of this stuff, and I could barely find a
> track that was longer than 3 minutes. Almost all of them are two minutes
> and something, and a few aren't even two minutes long. A vanishingly
> small number exceed 3 minutes, and not one single one reaches to 4
> minutes. And yet, these are (almost) all iconic era-defining
> masterpieces of popular music, instantly recognisible to anyone who has
> heard them.
I noticed more or less the same with Tom Lehrer (mid 50s- mid 60s and
some a bit later), but I did not think of posting to get feedback.
E.g. the sort of still relevant 'Send the Marines' is only 1:46 and the
'Hunting Song' comes in three versions: an orchestrated one of 1:49, one
with an introduction of 1:59, but also one of only 1:19. OTOH 'New Math'
is 4:30 though that also includes an introduction.
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I very much preferred when mediocre music lasted no more than a minute
or so. Repetitive beats and chord progressions with no variations other
than echo and other digital effects layered in may only sound cool when
stoned.
It's not that I dislike all of electronic music. Here's quite a few I
truly enjoy for your listening pleasure:
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/wipeout/tpxosbeptj/02-cardinal-dancer.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/wipeout/zyyrnklcoy/04-doh-t.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/wipeout/hsnarrtsme/06-operatique.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/tekken-3-playstation-soundtrack-002/tmkauniayw/06-paul-phoenix.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/tekken-3-playstation-soundtrack-002/ubpnnaqiyj/11-yoshimitsu.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/tekken-5-original-soundtrack/qjfbmpjdkn/08.-tekken-5-moonlit-wilderness.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/tekken-5-original-soundtrack/klzvmgpwae/05.-tekken-5-formless-like-water.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/metroid-prime-ost/nbnbomsrtx/25-phendrana-drifts-edge-of-phendrana.mp3
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/metroid-prime-ost/yzonvysovz/27-underwater-frigate-reactor-core.mp3
incidentally, they are all from videogames. Wipeout one composed by a
guy from your area, Tim Wright aka CoLD SToRAGE... :)
Perhaps for the fact that they were composed to illustrate the action
going on and environments they don't sound as shallow as most other such
music. Or perhaps it's simply nostalgia from the games blinding me? :)
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
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nemesis wrote:
> It's not that I dislike all of electronic music. Here's quite a few I
> truly enjoy for your listening pleasure:
I bet you'd like Jean-Michael Jarre too.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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